Nationalism and Political Legitimacy

The idea of political representation involves the idea that an elected political body can represent a citizen's will despite the fact that it consists mostly or exclusively of persons for whom she has not voted. This again presupposes that the citizen is able to see other voters' choices as to some degree authoritative in questions about what she should do. This again means that she sees the affairs of the State as a concern that she shares with others.

The question is then, how we are to understand this sense of 'sharing'. The modern nation-state articulates the sense of community in question in terms of national belonging. However, the question still remains of how one's membership in a socially defined group could, as such, create obligations. The answer must, it seems, be given along the following lines.

The idea of political legitimacy implies that the individual, in some sense, sees the decisions made by the State (or another relevant political body) as expressions of her own will. That is, in some sense they express concerns shared by her even in the cases where specific decisions go against her personal views. This idea was expressed in Rousseau's notion of the General Will (Rousseau 1987, Bk IV, Ch II, p. 206). But as Rousseau also noted, the idea of a political community of this kind presupposes a previous community of people already 'bound by some union of origin, interest or convention' (Bk II, Ch X, p. 169). In other words, the individuals must see themselves as rooted in a common culture.

In such a situation, political decisions made by the collective are articulations of concerns shared by the individual citizen, and her sense of political obligation is an expression of this sense of community - rather than simply the acceptance of decisions imposed on her from the outside.

Our rootedness in a culture creates the basis of 'collective identity' when contrasted with other ways of life that strike us as foreign in some way. The idea of nationality is one form that such contrasts may take.

The meaning of citizenship will be mediated to us by the fact that we do, or do not, belong to the 'same' nation as do the bulk of our fellow citizens. Conversely, 'the nation' is partly constituted by the fact that we regard certain concerns as shared (see Anderson 1982).

In literature, a distinction is frequently made between ethnic and civic nationalism. The current liberal, English-speaking consensus is that only civic nationalism can be morally justified. This is because membership in a nation defined in civic, as opposed to ethnic, terms is seen as based on universalist criteria such as identification with certain political creeds or institutions (see Bauhn 1995, Greenfeld 1992, Häyry & Häyry 1993).

However, this view has several weaknesses. First of all, it implies that no form of acceptable nationalism is available for persons who cannot identify with the political institutions of their State's core culture. This discouraging conclusion might be acceptable for ethnic minorities if the existing political institutions were ethnically neutral; however, usually they are not, simply because they will employ specific working languages to the exclusion of others. The question what constitutes ethnic neutrality will in fact be one of the central questions in ethnic conflicts.

Furthermore, the validity of the distinction between universalist and particularist criteria for national belonging can itself be questioned.

As a rule, critics of ethnic nationalism conflate shared culture with shared ancestry - the very mistake that ethnic nationalisms are accused of. If a nation is defined in terms of a shared cultural feature, say a language, it is in principle open to anyone who learns the language and shows loyalty to it. It is true that membership by personal choice must be an exception in any ethnically defined nation. Nevertheless, historically, several leaders of ethnic nationalist movements have only acquired the relevant language (e.g. Finnish, Cymric, Breton, Lithuanian, Gaelic) as adults.

On the other hand, civic nationalism would seem either to justify withholding or withdrawing citizenship from those not subscribing to the nation's political creed or, alternatively, assuming an ideological homogeneity that must be rare in today's societies.

Finally, consistent application of civic criteria seems insufficient to mark out a nation rather than a political movement or a charity. The constitutions of modern liberal democracies resemble each other closely. Subscribing to one of them does not explain why one's allegiance should be to one national community rather than another. Adding a territorial criterion would be purely ad hoc since the political principles of embodied in a liberal constitution do not themselves explain why one's sense of solidarity should fall short at a state border. As a matter of fact, it would be misleading to divorce the importance of, say, the U.S. Constitution for U.S. citizens, from its historical role in the nation's formative events.

Thus the contrast between civic and ethnic nationalisms may, to some extent, be a red herring.

It seems that all nationalisms, by definition, must be 'particularist' in the following sense. As a nationalist, I believe that my membership in a nation (in whatever way defined) is essential to my personal identity. I believe that I cannot fully express this identity unless I have access to political institutions that reflect the particularity of the nation to which I belong. I assume a relation which, like friendship or kinship, by definition excludes some people and includes others.

Hence a person who works for a nationalist cause - say, a Chechen working for the freedom of Chechnia - need not think of his own nation as superior to others. What makes his cause a 'particularist' one is the fact that it is related to his life in a way that it cannot be related to ours. He is facing choices that would not be within our intelligible reach, since his particular situation is different from ours.

On the other hand, while his belonging to a certain nation rather than another is a fact, what he will do about this fact will depend on what he makes of his identity as a Chechen as opposed to his other, potentially conflicting, loyalties. Acknowledging a fact is compatible with reflecting on it and drawing various conclusions from it. Nothing is implied about whether, say, governments ought to, or ought not to, foster a sense of national belonging among their citizens.

Related questions have previously been discussed by the present writer (Lagerspetz 1992, 1996a).

Literature

Anderson, Benedict (1982): Imagined Communities (London: Verso).

Bauhn, Per (1995): Nationalism and Morality (Lund University Press).

Greenfeld, Liah (1992): Nationalism - Five Roads to Modernity (Harvard University Press).

Häyry, H & Häyry, M (1993): 'Reason and Nation?' International Journal of Moral and Social Studies 8, 143-154.

Lagerspetz, Olli (1992): 'Legitimacy and Trust'. Philosophical Investigations 15, 1-21.

Lagerspetz, Olli (1996a): The Tacit Demand - A Study in Trust (Åbo Academy Press).

Rousseau, J-J (1987): 'On the Social Contract'. In Basic Political Writings (Indianapolis: Hackett).